ECSTASY AND RAPTURE

Ecstasy is the last term of Contemplation--Mystics regard it as a
very favourable state--Its physical aspect--The trance--an abnormal bodily
state--Healthy and unhealthy trances--their characteristics--St. Catherine of
Genoa--Psychological aspect of ecstasy--Complete mono-ideism--A temporary
unification of consciousness--Often helped by symbols--St. Catherine of
Siena--Description of healthy ecstasy--It entails a new perception of
Reality--Mystical aspect of Ecstasy--a state of "Pure Apprehension"--the
completion of the Orison of Union--Sometimes hard to distinguish from it--The
real distinction is in entrancement--St. Teresa on union and ecstasy--Results
of ecstasy confirm those of contemplation--no sharp line possible between the
two--Many cases cannot be classified--Rolle on two forms of Rapture--The mystic
in ecstasy claims that he attains the Absolute--The nature of his
consciousness--a concentration of his whole being on one act--A perception of
Eternity--Suso--the Neoplatonists--Plotinus--Self-mergence--Jacopone da
Todi--Ecstatic vision--Rapture--its distinction from Ecstasy--it indicates
psycho-physical disharmony--St. Teresa on Rapture--Levitation--Rapture always
entails bodily immobility--generally mental disorder--Its final result good for
life--Ecstatic states contribute to the organic development of the
self.

SINCE the object of all contemplation is the production of that state
of intimate communion in which the mystics declare that the self is "in God and
God is in her," it might be supposed that the orison of union represented the
end of mystical activity, in so far as it is concerned with the attainment of a
transitory but exalted consciousness of "oneness with the Absolute." Nearly all
the great contemplatives, however, describe as a distinct, and regard as a more
advanced phase of the spiritual consciousness, the group of definitely ecstatic
states in which the concentration of interest on the Transcendent is so
complete, the gathering up and pouring out of life on this one point so
intense, that the subject is more or less entranced, and becomes, for the time
of the ecstasy, unconscious of the external world. In ordinary contemplation he
refused to attend to that external world: it was there, a blurred image, at the
fringe of his conscious field, but he deliberately left it on one side. In
ecstasy he cannot attend to it. None of its messages reach him: not even
those most insistent of all messages which are translated into the terms of
bodily pain. All mystics agree in regarding such
ecstasy as an exceptionally favourable state; the one in which man's spirit is
caught up to the most immediate union with the divine. The word has become a
synonym for joyous exaltation, for the inebriation of the Infinite. The induced ecstasies of the Dionysian mysteries, the metaphysical
raptures of the Neoplatonists, the voluntary or involuntary trance of Indian
mystics and Christian saints--all these, however widely they may differ in
transcendental value, agree in claiming such value, in declaring that this
change in the quality of consciousness brought with it a valid and ineffable
apprehension of the Real. Clearly, this apprehension will vary in quality and
content with the place of the subject in the spiritual scale. The ecstasy is
merely the psycho-physical condition which accompanies it. "It is hardly a
paradox to say," says Myers, "that the evidence for ecstasy is stronger than
the evidence for any other religious belief. Of all the subjective experiences
of religion, ecstasy is that which has been most urgently, perhaps to the
psychologist most convincingly asserted; and it is not confined to any one
religion. . . . From the medicine man of the lowest savages up to St. John, St.
Peter, and St. Paul, with Buddha and Mahomet on the way, we find records which,
though morally and intellectually much differing, are in psychological essence
the same."[732]

There are three distinct aspects under which the
ecstatic state may be studied:

the physical,

the psychological,

the mystical.

Many of the deplorable
misunderstandings and still more deplorable mutual recriminations which
surround its discussion come from the refusal of experts in one of these three
branches to consider the results arrived at by the other two.

Physically considered, ecstasy is a trance;
more or less deep, more or less prolonged. The subject may slide into it
gradually from a period of absorption in, or contemplation of, some idea which
has filled the field of consciousness: or, it may come on suddenly, the
appearance of the idea--or even some word or symbol suggesting the
idea--abruptly throwing the subject into an entranced condition. This is the
state which some mystical writers call Rapture. The distinction, however, is a
conventional one: and the works of the mystics describe many intermediate
forms.

During the trance, breathing and circulation are
depressed. The body is more or less cold and rigid, remaining in the exact
position which it occupied at the oncoming of the ecstasy, however difficult
and unnatural this pose may be. Sometimes entrancement is so deep that there is
complete anaesthesia, as in the case which I quote from the life of St.
Catherine of Siena.[733] Credible witnesses
report that Bernadette, the visionary of Lourdes, held the flaming end of a
candle in her hand for fifteen minutes during one of her ecstasies. She felt no
pain, neither did the flesh show any marks of burning. Similar
instances of ecstatic anesthesia abound in the lives of the saints, and are
also characteristic of certain pathological states.[734]

The trance includes, according to the testimony
of the ecstatics, two distinct phases--(a) the short period of lucidity
and (b) a longer period of complete unconsciousness, which may pass into
a death like catalepsy, lasting for hours; or, as once with St. Teresa, for
days. "The difference between union and trance," says Teresa, "is this: that
the latter lasts longer and is more visible outwardly, because the breathing
gradually diminishes, so that it becomes impossible to speak or to open the
eyes. And though this very thing occurs when the soul is in union, there is
more violence in a trance, for the natural warmth vanishes, I know not how,
when the rapture is deep, and in all these kinds of orison there is more or
less of this. When it is deep, as I was saying, the hands become cold and
sometimes stiff and straight as pieces of wood; as to the body if the rapture
comes on when it is standing or kneeling it remains so; and the soul is so full
of the joy of that which Our Lord is setting before it, that it seems to forget
to animate the body and abandons it. If the rapture lasts, the nerves are made
to feel it."[735]

Such ecstasy as this, so far as its physical
symptoms go, is not of course the peculiar privilege of the mystics. It is an
abnormal bodily state, caused by a psychic state: and this causal psychic state
may be healthy or unhealthy, the result of genius or disease. It is common in
the little understood type of personality called "sensitive" or mediumistic: it
is a well-known symptom of certain mental and nervous illnesses. A feeble mind
concentrated on one idea--like a hypnotic subject gazing at one spot--easily
becomes entranced; however trivial the idea which gained possession of his
consciousness. Apart from its content, then, ecstasy carries no guarantee of
spiritual value. It merely indicates the presence of certain abnormal
psycho-physical conditions: an alteration of the normal equilibrium, a shifting
of the threshold of consciousness, which leaves the body, and the whole usual
"external world" outside instead of inside the conscious field, and even
affects those physical functions--such as breathing--which are almost entirely
automatic. Thus ecstasy, physically considered, may occur in any person in whom
(1) the threshold of consciousness is exceptionally mobile and (2) there is a
tendency to dwell upon one governing idea or intuition. Its worth depends
entirely on the objective value of that idea or intuition.

In the hysterical patient, thanks to an unhealthy
condition of the centres of consciousness, any trivial or irrational idea, any
one of the odds and ends stored up in the subliminal region, may
thus become fixed, dominate the mind, and produce entrancement. Such ecstasy is
an illness: the emphasis is on the pathological state which makes it possible.
In the mystic, the idea which fills his life is so great a one--the idea of
God--that, in proportion as it is vivid, real, and intimate, it inevitably
tends to monopolize the field of consciousness. Here the emphasis is on the
overpowering strength of spirit, not on the feeble and unhealthy state of body
or mind.[736] This true ecstasy, says
Godferneaux, is not a malady, but "the extreme form of a state which must be
classed amongst the ordinary accidents of conscious life."[737]

The mystics themselves are fully aware of the
importance of this distinction. Ecstasies, no less than visions and voices,
must they declare, be subjected to unsparing criticism before they are
recognized as divine: whilst some are undoubtedly "of God," others are no less
clearly "of the devil." "The great doctors of the mystic life," says Malaval,
"teach that there are two sorts of rapture, which must be carefully
distinguished. The first are produced in persons but little advanced in the
Way, and still full of selfhood; either by the force of a heated imagination
which vividly apprehends a sensible object, or by the artifice of the Devil.
These are the raptures which St. Teresa calls, in various parts of her works,
Raptures of Feminine Weakness. The other sort of Rapture is, on the contrary,
the effect of pure intellectual vision in those who have a great and generous
love for God. To generous souls who have utterly renounced themselves, God
never fails in these raptures to communicate high things."[738]

All the mystics agree with Malaval in finding the
test of a true ecstasy, not in its outward sign, but in its inward grace, its
after-value: and here psychology would do well to follow their example. The
ecstatic states, which are supreme instances of the close connection between
body and soul, have bodily as well as mental results: and those results are as
different and as characteristic as those observed in healthy and in morbid
organic processes. If the concentration has been upon the highest centre of
consciousness, the organ of spiritual perception--if a door has really been
opened by which the self has escaped for an instant to the vision of That Which
Is--the ecstasy will be good for life. The entrancement of
disease, on the contrary is always bad for life. Its concentration being upon
the lower instead of the higher levels of mentality, it depresses rather than
enhances the vitality, the fervour, or the intelligence of its subject: and
leaves behind it an enfeebled will, and often moral and intellectual chaos.[739] "Ecstasies that do not produce
considerable profit either to the persons themselves or others, deserve to be
suspected," says Augustine Baker, "and when any marks of their approaching are
perceived, the persons ought to divert their minds some other way."[740] It is the difference between a healthy
appetite for nourishing food and a morbid craving for garbage. The same organs
of digestion are used in satisfying both: yet he would be a hardy physiologist
who undertook to discredit all nutrition by a reference to its degenerate
forms.

Sometimes both kinds of ecstasy, the healthy and
the psychopathic, are seen in the same person. Thus in the cases of St.
Catherine of Genoa and St. Catherine of Siena it would seem that as their
health became feebler and the nervous instability always found in persons of
genius increased, their ecstasies became more frequent; but these were not
healthy ecstasies, such as those which they experienced in the earlier stages
of their careers, and which brought with them an access of vitality. They were
the results of increasing weakness of body, not of the overpowering strength of
the spirit: and there is evidence that Catherine of Genoa, that acute
self-critic, was conscious of this. "Those who attended on her did not know how
to distinguish one state from the other. And hence on coming to; she would
sometimes say, `Why did you let me remain in this quietude, from which I have
almost died?'"[741] Her earlier ecstasies,
on the contrary, had in a high degree the positive character of exaltation and
life-enhancement consequent upon extreme concentration on the Absolute; as well
as the merely negative character of annihilation of the surface-consciousness.
She came from them with renewed health and strength, as from a resting in
heavenly places and a feeding on heavenly food: and side by side with this
ecstatic life, fulfilled the innumerable duties of her active vocation as
hospital matron and spiritual mother of a large group of disciples. "Many
times," says her legend, "she would hide herself in some secret place and there
stay: and being sought she was found upon the ground, her face hidden in her
hands, altogether beyond herself, in such a state of joy as is beyond thought
or speech: and being called--yea, even in a loud voice--she heard not. And at
other times she would go up and down. . . . as if beyond herself,
drawn by the impulse of love, she did this. And certain other times she
remained for the space of six hours as if dead: but hearing herself called,
suddenly she got up, and answering she would at once go about all that needed
to be done even the humblest things.[742]
And in thus leaving the All, she went without any grief, because she fled all
selfhood (la proprietà) as if it were
the devil. And when she came forth from her hiding-place her face was rosy as
it might be a cherub's; and it seemed as if she might have said, `Who shall
separate me from the love of God?'"[743]
"Very often," says St. Teresa, describing the results of such rapturous
communion with Pure Love as that from which St. Catherine came joyous and
rosy-faced, "he who was before sickly and full of pain comes forth healthy and
even with new strength: for it is something great that is given to the soul in
rapture."[744]

Psychologically considered, all ecstasy is a
form--the most perfect form--of the state which is technically called "complete
mono-ideism," That withdrawal of consciousness from circumference to centre,
that deliberate attention to one thing, which we discussed in
Recollection, is here pushed--voluntarily or involuntarily--to its logical
conclusion. It is (1) always paid for by psycho-physical disturbances; (2)
rewarded in healthy cases by an enormous lucidity, a supreme intuition in
regard to the one thing on which the self's interest has been set.

Such ecstasy, then, is an exalted form of
contemplation, and might be expected in appropriate subjects to develop
naturally from that state. "A simple difference of degree," says Maury,
"separates ecstasy from the action of forcibly fixing an idea in the mind.
Contemplation implies exercise of will, and the power of interrupting the
extreme tension of the mind. In ecstasy, which is contemplation carried to its
highest pitch, the will, although in the strictest sense able to provoke the
state, is nevertheless unable to suspend it."[745]

In "complete mono-ideism" then, the attention to
one thing and the inattention to all else, is so entire that the subject is
entranced. Consciousness has been withdrawn from those centres which receive
and respond to the messages of the external world: he neither sees, feels, nor
hears. The Ego dormio et cor meum vigilat
of the contemplative ceases to be a metaphor, and becomes a
realistic description. It must be remembered that the whole trend
of mystical education has been toward the production of this fixity of
attention. Recollection and Quiet lead up to it. Contemplation cannot take
place without it. All the mystics assure us that a unification of
consciousness, in which all outward things are forgot, is the necessary prelude
of union with the Divine; for consciousness of the Many and consciousness of
the One are mutually exclusive states. Ecstasy, for the psychologist, is such a
unification in its extreme form. The absorption of the self in the one idea,
the one desire, is so profound--and in the case of the great mystics so
impassioned--that everything else is blotted out. The tide of life is
withdrawn, not only from those higher centres which are the seats of perception
and of thought, but also from those lower centres which govern the physical
life. The whole vitality of the subject is so concentrated on the
transcendental world--or, in a morbid ecstatic, on the idea which dominates his
mind--that body and brain alike are depleted of their energy in the interests
of this supreme act.

Since mystics have, as a rule, the extreme
susceptibility to suggestions and impressions which is characteristic of
artistic and creative types, it is not surprising that their ecstasies are
often evoked, abruptly, by the exhibition of, or concentration upon, some loved
and special symbol of the divine. Such symbols form the rallying-points about
which are gathered a whole group of ideas and intuitions. Their
presence--sometimes the sudden thought of them--will be enough, in
psychological language, to provoke a discharge of energy along some particular
path: that is to say, to stir to life all those ideas and intuitions which
belong to the self's consciousness of the Absolute, to concentrate vitality on
them, and introduce the self into that world of perception of which they are,
as it were, the material keys. Hence the profound significance of symbols for
some mystics: their paradoxical clinging to outward forms, whilst declaring
that the spiritual and intangible alone is real.

For the Christian mystics, the sacraments and
mysteries of faith have always provided such a point
d'appui; and these often play a large part in the
production of their ecstasies. For St. Catherine of Siena, and also very often
for her namesake of Genoa, the reception of Holy Communion was the prelude to
ecstasy. Julian of Norwich[746] and St.
Francis of Assissi[747] became entranced
whilst gazing on the crucifix. We are told of Denis the Carthusian that towards
the end of his life, hearing the Veni Creator or certain verses of the
psalms, he was at once rapt in God and lifted up from the earth.[748]

Of St. Catherine of Siena, her biographer says
that "she used to communicate with such fervour that immediately afterwards she
would pass into the state of ecstasy, in which for hours she would be totally
unconscious. On one occasion, finding her in this condition, they (the
Dominican friars) forcibly threw her out of the church at midday, and left her
in the heat of the sun watched over by some of her companions till she came to
her senses." Another, "catching sight of her in the church when she was in
ecstasy, came down and pricked her in many places with a needle. Catherine was
not aroused in the least from her trance, but afterwards, when she came back to
her senses, she felt the pain in her body and perceived that she had thus been
wounded."[749]

It is interesting to compare with this objective
description, the subjective account of ecstatic union which St. Catherine gives
in her "Divine Dialogue." Here, the deeper self of the mystic is giving in a
dramatic form its own account of its inward experiences: hence we see the
inward side of that outward state of entrancement, which was all that onlookers
were able to perceive. As usual in the Dialogue, the intuitive perceptions of
the deeper self are attributed by St. Catherine to the Divine Voice speaking in
her soul.

"Oftentimes, through the perfect union which the
soul has made with Me, she is raised from the earth almost as if the heavy body
became light. But this does not mean that the heaviness of the body is taken
away, but that the union of the soul with Me is more perfect than the union of
the body with the soul; wherefore the strength of the spirit, united with Me,
raises the weight of the body from the earth, leaving it as if immoveable and
all pulled to pieces in the affection of the soul. Thou rememberest to have
heard it said of some creatures, that were it not for My Goodness, in seeking
strength for them, they would not be able to live; and I would tell thee that,
in the fact that the souls of some do not leave their bodies, is to be seen a
greater miracle than in the fact that some have arisen from the dead, so great
is the union which they have with Me. I, therefore, sometimes for a space
withdraw from the union, making the soul return to the vessel of her body . . .
from which she was separated by the affection of love. From the body she did
not depart, because that cannot be except in death; the bodily powers alone
departed, becoming united to Me through affection of love. The memory is full
of nothing but Me, the intellect, elevated, gazes upon the object of My Truth;
the affection, which follows the intellect, loves and becomes united with that
which the intellect sees. These powers being united and gathered together and
immersed and inflamed in Me, the body loses its feeling, so that
the seeing eye sees not, and the hearing ear hears not, and the tongue does not
speak; except as the abundance of the heart will sometimes permit it, for the
alleviation of the heart and the praise and glory of My Name. The hand does not
touch and the feet walk not, because the members are bound with the sentiment
of Love."[750]

A healthy ecstasy so deep as this seems to be the
exclusive prerogative of the mystics: perhaps because so great a passion, so
profound a concentration, can be produced by nothing smaller than their flaming
love of God. But as the technique of contemplation is employed more or less
consciously by all types of creative genius--by inventors and philosophers, by
poets, prophets, and musicians, by all the followers of the "Triple Star," no
less than by the mystic saints--so too this apotheosis of contemplation, the
ecstatic state, sometimes appears in a less violent form, acting healthily and
normally, in artistic and creative personalities at a complete stage of
development. It may accompany the prophetic intuitions of the seer, the
lucidity of the great metaphysician, the artist's supreme perception of beauty
or truth. As the saint is "caught up to God," so these are "caught up" to their
vision: their partial apprehensions of the Absolute Life. Those joyous,
expansive outgoing sensations, characteristic of the ecstatic consciousness,
are theirs also. Their greatest creations are translations to us, not of
something they have thought, but of something they have known, in a moment of
ecstatic union with the "great life of the All."

We begin, then, to think that the "pure
mono-ideism," which the psychologist identifies with ecstasy, though doubtless
a part, is far from being the whole content of this state, True, the ecstatic
is absorbed in his one idea, his one love: he is in it and with it: it fills
his universe. But this unified state of consciousness does not merely pore upon
something already possessed. When it only does this, it is diseased. Its true
business is pure perception. It is outgoing, expansive: its goal is something
beyond itself. The rearrangement of the psychic self which occurs in ecstasy is
not merely concerned with the normal elements of consciousness. It is rather a
temporary unification of consciousness round that centre of transcendental
perception which mystics call the "apex" or the "spark of the soul." Those
deeper layers of personality which normal life keeps below the threshold are
active in it: and these are fused with the surface personality by the governing
passion, the transcendent love which lies at the basis of all sane ecstatic
states. The result is not merely a mind concentrated on one idea nor a heart
fixed on one desire, nor even a mind and a heart united in the
interests of a beloved thought: but a whole being welded into one, all its
faculties, neglecting their normal universe, grouped about a new centre,
serving a new life, and piercing like a single flame the barriers of the
sensual world. Ecstasy is the psycho-physical state which may accompany this
brief synthetic act.

Therefore, whilst on its physical side ecstasy
is an entrancement, on its mental side a complete unification of consciousness,
on its mystical side it is an exalted act of perception. It represents the
greatest possible extension of the spiritual consciousness in the direction of
Pure Being: the "blind intent stretching" here receives its reward in a
profound experience of Eternal Life. In this experience the departmental
activities of thought and feeling the consciousness of I-hood, of space and
time--all that belongs to the World of Becoming and our own place therein--are
suspended. The vitality which we are accustomed to split amongst these various
things, is gathered up to form a state of "pure apprehension": a vivid
intuition of--or if you like conjunction with--the Transcendent. For the time
of his ecstasy the mystic is, for all practical purposes, as truly living in
the supersensual world as the normal human animal is living in the sensual
world. He is experiencing the highest and most joyous of those temporary and
unstable states--those "passive unions"--in which his consciousness escapes the
limitations of the senses, rises to freedom, and is united for an instant with
the "great life of the All."

Ecstasy, then, from the contemplative's point of
view, is the development and completion of the orison of union, and he is not
always at pains to distinguish the two degrees, a fact which adds greatly to
the difficulties of students.[751] In both
states--though he may, for want of better language, describe his experience in
terms of sight--the Transcendent is perceived by contact, not by vision: as,
enfolded in darkness with one whom we love, we obtain a knowledge far more
complete than that conferred by the sharpest sight the most perfect mental
analysis. In Ecstasy, the apprehension is perhaps more definitely "beatific"
than in the orison of union. Such memory of his feeling-state as the ecstatic
brings back with him is more often concerned with an exultant certainty--a
conviction that he has known for once the Reality which hath no image, and
solved the paradox of life--than with meek self-loss in that Cloud of Unknowing
where the contemplative in union is content to meet his Beloved. The true note
of ecstasy, however, its only valid distinction from infused contemplation,
lies in entrancement; in "being ravished out of fleshly
feeling," as St. Paul caught up to the Third Heaven,[752] not in "the lifting of mind unto God." This, of course,
is an outward distinction only, and a rough one at that, since entrancement has
many degrees: but it will be found the only practical basis of
classification.

Probably none but those who have experienced
these states know the actual difference between them. Even St. Teresa's
psychological insight fails her here, and she is obliged to fall back on the
difference between voluntary and involuntary absorption in the divine: a
difference, not in spiritual values, but merely in the psycho-physical
constitution of those who have perceived these values. "I wish I could explain
with the help of God," she says, "wherein union differs from rapture, or from
transport, or from flight of the spirit, as they call it, or from trance, which
are all one. I mean that all these are only different names for that one and
the same thing, which is also called ecstasy. It is more excellent than
union, the fruits of it are much greater, and its other operations more
manifold, for union is uniform in the beginning, the middle, and the end, and
is so also interiorly; but as raptures have ends of a much higher kind, they
produce effects both within and without [i.e., both physical and
psychical]. . . . A rapture is absolutely irresistible; whilst union, inasmuch
as we are then on our own ground, may be hindered, though that resistance be
painful and violent."[753]

From the point of view of mystical psychology,
our interest in ecstasy will centre in two points. (1) What has the mystic to
tell us of the Object of his ecstatic perception? (2) What is the nature of the
peculiar consciousness which he enjoys in his trance? That is to say, what news
does he bring us as to the Being of God and the powers of man?

It may be said generally that on both these
points he bears out, amplifies, and expresses under formulae of greater
splendour, with an accent of greater conviction, the general testimony of the
contemplatives. In fact, we must never forget that an ecstatic is really
nothing else than a contemplative of a special kind, with a special
psycho-physical make-up. Moreover, we have seen that it is not always easy to
determine the exact point at which entrancement takes place, and deep
contemplation assumes the ecstatic form. The classification, like all
classifications of mental states, is an arbitrary one. Whilst the extreme cases
present no difficulty, there are others less complete, which form a graduated
series between the deeps of the "Quiet" and the heights of "Rapture." We shall
never know, for instance, whether the ecstasies of Plotinus and of Pascal
involved true bodily entrancement, or only a deep absorption of
the "unitive" kind. So, too, the language of many Christian mystics when
speaking of their "raptures" is so vague and metaphorical that it leaves us in
great doubt as to whether they mean by Rapture the abrupt suspension of normal
consciousness, or merely a sudden and agreeable elevation of soul.

"Ravishing," says Rolle, "as it is showed, in two
ways is to be understood. One manner, forsooth, in which a man is ravished out
of fleshly feeling; so that for the time of his ravishing plainly he feels
nought in flesh, nor what is done of his flesh, and yet he is not dead but
quick, for yet the soul to the body gives life. And on this manner saints
sometime are ravished, to their profit and other men's learning; as Paul
ravished to the third heaven. And on this manner sinners also in vision
sometime are ravished, that they may see joys of saints and pains of damned for
their correction.[754] And many other as we
read of. Another manner of ravishing there is, that is lifting of mind into God
by contemplation. And this manner of ravishing is in all that are perfect
lovers of God, and in none of them but that love God. And as well this is
called a ravishing as the other; for with a violence it is done, and as it were
against nature."[755]

It is, however, very confusing to the anxious
inquirer when--as too often--"lifting of mind by contemplation" is "as well
called a ravishing as the other," and ecstasy is used as a synonym for gladness
of heart. Here, so far as is possible, these words will be confined to their
strict meaning, and not applied generally to the description of all the
outgoing and expansive states of the transcendental consciousness.

What does the mystic claim that he attains in
this abnormal condition--this irresistible trance? The price that he pays is
heavy, involving much psycho-physical wear and tear. He declares that his
rapture or ecstasy includes a moment--often a very short, and always an
indescribable moment--in which he enjoys a supreme knowledge of or
participation in Divine Reality. He tells us under various metaphors that he
then attains Pure Being, his Source, his Origin, his Beloved: "is engulphed in
the very thing for which he longs, which is God."[756] "Oh, wonder of wonders," cries Eckhart, "when I think
of the union the soul has with God! He makes the enraptured soul to flee out of
herself, for she is no more satisfied with anything that can be named. The
spring of Divine Love flows out of the soul and draws her out of
herself into the unnamed Being, into her first source, which is God alone."[757]

This momentary attainment of the Source, the
Origin, is the theme of all descriptions of mystic ecstasy. In Rulman Merswin's
"Book of the Nine Rocks," that brief and overwhelming rapture is the end of the
pilgrim's long trials and ascents. "The vision of the Infinite lasted only for
a moment: when he came to himself he felt inundated with life and joy. He
asked, `Where have I been?' and he was answered, `In the upper school of the
Holy Spirit. There you were surrounded by the dazzling pages of the Book of
Divine Wisdom.[758] Your soul plunged
therein with delight, and the Divine Master of the school has filled her with
an exuberant love by which even your physical nature has been transfigured.'"[759] Another Friend of God, Ellina von
Crevelsheim, who was of so abnormal a psychic constitution that her absorption
in the Divine Love caused her to remain dumb for seven years, was "touched by
the Hand of God" at the end of that period, and fell into a five-days' ecstasy,
in which "pure truth" was revealed to her, and she was lifted up to an
immediate experience of the Absolute. There she "saw the interior of the
Father's heart," and was "bound with chains of love, enveloped in light, and
filled with peace and joy."[760]

In this transcendent act of union, the mystic
sometimes says that he is "conscious of nothing." But it is clear that this
expression is figurative, for otherwise he would not have known that there had
been an act of union: were his individuality abolished, it could not have been
aware of its attainment of God. What he appears to mean is that consciousness
so changes its form as to be no longer recognizable or describable in human
speech. In the paradoxical language of Richard of St. Victor, "In a wondrous
fashion remembering we do not remember, seeing we do not see, understanding we
not understand, penetrating we do not penetrate."[761] In this indescribable but most actual state, the whole
self, exalted and at white heat, is unified and poured out in one vivid act of
impassioned perception, which leaves no room for reflection or
self-observation. That aloof "somewhat" in us which watches all our actions,
splits our consciousness, has been submerged. The mystic is attending
exclusively to Eternity, not to his own perception of Eternity.
That he can only consider when the ecstasy itself is at an end.

"All things I then forgot,
My cheek on Him Who for my coming came,All ceased, and I was not,
Leaving my cares and shame
Among the lilies, and forgetting
them."[762]

This is that perfect unity of consciousness, that
utter concentration on an experience of love, which excludes all conceptual and
analytic acts. Hence, when the mystic says that his faculties were suspended,
that he "knew all and knew nought," he really means that he was so concentrated
on the Absolute that he ceased to consider his separate existence: so merged in
it that he could not perceive it as an object of thought, as the bird cannot
see the air which supports it, nor the fish the ocean in which it swims. He
really "knows all" but "thinks" nought: "perceives all," but "conceives
nought."

The ecstatic consciousness is not self-conscious:
it is intuitive not discursive. Under the sway of a great passion, possessed by
a great Idea, it has become "a single state of enormous intensity."[763] In this state, it transcends our ordinary
processes of knowledge, and plunges deep into the Heart of Reality. A fusion
which is the anticipation of the unitive life takes place: and the ecstatic
returns from this brief foretaste of freedom saying, "I know, as having known,
the meaning of Existence; the sane centre of the universe--at once the wonder
and the assurance of the soul."[764] "This
utter transformation of the soul in God," says St. Teresa, describing the same
experience in the official language of theology, "continues only for an
instant: yet while it continues no faculty of the soul is aware of it, or knows
what is passing there. Nor can it be understood while we are living on the
earth; at least God will not have us understand it, because we must be
incapable of understanding it. I know is by
experience."765Theutterances of those who
know by experience are here of more worth than all the statements of
psychology, which are concerned of necessity with the "outward signs" of this
"inward and spiritual grace." To these we must go if we would obtain some hint
of that which ecstasy may mean to the ecstatic.

"When the soul, forgetting itself, dwells in that
radiant darkness," says Suso, "it loses all its faculties and all its
qualities, as St. Bernard has said. And this, more or less completely,
according to whether the soul--whether in the body or out of the
body--is more or less united to God. This forgetfulness of self is, in a
measure, a transformation in God; who then becomes, in a certain manner, all
things for the soul, as Scripture saith. In this rapture the soul disappears,
but not yet entirely. It acquires, it is true, certain qualities of divinity,
but does not naturally become divine. . . . To speak in the common language,
the soul is rapt, by the divine power of resplendent Being, above its natural
faculties, into the nakedness of the Nothing."[766]

Here Suso is trying to describe his rapturous
attainment of God in the negative terms of Dionysian theology. It is probable
that much of the language of that theology originated, not in the abstract
philosophizings, but in the actual ecstatic experience, of the Neoplatonists,
who--Christian and Pagan alike--believed in, and sometimes deliberately
induced, this condition as the supreme method of attaining the One. The whole
Christian doctrine of ecstasy, on its metaphysical side, really descends from
that great practical transcendentalist Plotinus: who is known to have been an
ecstatic, and has left in his Sixth Ennead a description of the mystical trance
obviously based upon his own experiences. "Then," he says, "the soul neither
sees, nor distinguishes by seeing, nor imagines that there are two things; but
becomes as it were another thing, ceases to be itself and belong to itself. It
belongs to God and is one with Him, like two concentric circles: concurring
they are One; but when they separate, they are two. . . . Since in this
conjunction with Deity there were not two things, but the perceiver was one
with the thing perceived, if a man could preserve the memory of what he was
when he mingled with the Divine, he would have within himself an image of God.
. . . For then nothing stirred within him, neither anger, nor desire, nor even
reason, nor a certain intellectual perception nor, in short, was he himself
moved, if we may assert this; but being in an ecstasy, tranquil and alone with
God, he enjoyed an unbreakable calm."[767]
Ecstasy, says Plotinus in another part of the same treatise, is "another mode
of seeing, a simplification and abandonment of oneself, a desire of contact,
rest, and a striving after union." All the phases of the contemplative
experience seem to be summed up in this phrase.

It has been said by some critics that the ecstasy
of Plotinus was different in kind from the ecstasy of the Christian saints:
that it was a philosophic rhapsody, something like Plato's "saving madness,"
which is also regarded on somewhat insufficient evidence as being an affair of
the head and entirely unconnected with the heart. At first sight the arid
metaphysical language in which Plotinus tries to tell his love,
offers some ground for this view. Nevertheless the ecstasy itself is a
practical matter; and has its root, not in reason, but in a deep-seated passion
for the Absolute which is far nearer to the mystic's love of God than to any
intellectual curiosity, however sublime. The few passages in which it is
mentioned tell us what his mystical genius drove him to do: and not what his
philosophical mind encouraged him to think or say. At once when we come to
these passages we notice a rise of temperature, an alteration of values.
Plotinus the ecstatic is sure whatever Plotinus the metaphysician may think,
that the union with God is a union of hearts: that "by love He may be gotten
and holden, but by thought never." He, no less than the mediaeval
contemplatives, is convinced--to quote his own words--that the Vision is only
for the desirous; for him who has that "loving passion" which "causes the lover
to rest in the object of his love."[768] The
simile of marriage, of conjunction as the soul's highest bliss, which we are
sometimes told that we owe in part to the unfortunate popularity of the Song of
Songs, in part to the sexual aberrations of celibate saints, is found in the
work of this hardheaded Pagan philosopher: who was as celebrated for his
practical kindness and robust common sense as for his transcendent intuitions
of the One.

The greatest of the Pagan ecstatics then, when
speaking from experience, anticipates the Christian contemplatives. His words,
too, when compared with theirs, show how delicate are the shades which
distinguish ecstasy such as this from the highest forms of orison. "Tranquil
and alone with God"--mingled for an instant of time "like two concentric
circles" with the Divine Life," "perceiver and perceived made one"--this is as
near as the subtle intellect of Alexandria can come to the reality of that
experience in which the impassioned mono-ideism of great spiritual genius
conquers the rebellious senses, and becomes, if only for a moment, operative on
the highest levels accessible to the human soul. Self-mergence, then--that
state of transcendence in which, the barriers of selfhood abolished, we
"receive the communication of Life and of Beatitude, in which all things are
consummated and all things are renewed"[769]--is the secret of ecstasy, as it was the secret of
contemplation. On their spiritual side the two states cannot, save for
convenience of description, be divided. Where contemplation becomes expansive,
out-going, self-giving, and receives a definite fruition of the Absolute in
return, its content is already ecstatic. Whether its outward form shall be so
depends on the body of the mystic, not on his soul.

Thus sang Jacopone da Todi of the ecstatic soul: and here the descriptive
powers of one who was both a poet and a mystic bring life and light to the dry
theories of psychology. He continues--and here, in
perhaps the finest of all poetic descriptions of ecstasy, he seems to echo at
one point Plotinus, at another Richard of St. Victor: at once to veil and
reveal the utmost secrets of the mystic life:--

" Aperte son le porte

facta ha
conjunzione,

et e in possessione

de tutto quel de Dio.

Sente que non sentio,

que non cognove vede,

possede que non crede,

gusta senza sapere.

Però ch' ha sé perduto

tutto senza
misura,

possede quel' altura

de summa smesuranza.

Perché non ha tenuto

en sé altra
mistura,

quel ben senza figura

recere en abondanza."771

This ineffable "awareness," en dio stando rapito, this union with the
Imageless Good, is not the only--though it is the purest--form taken by
ecstatic apprehension. Many of the visions and voices described in a previous
chapter were experienced in the entranced or ecstatic state; generally when the
first violence of the rapture was passed. St. Francis and St. Catherine of
Siena both received the stigmata in ecstasy: almost all the entrancements of
Suso and many of those of St. Teresa and Angela of Foligno, entailed symbolic
vision, rather than pure perception of the Absolute. More and more, then, we
are forced to the opinion that ecstasy, in so far as it is not a synonym for
joyous and expansive contemplation, is really the name of the outward condition
rather than of any one kind of inward experience.

In all the cases which we have been
considering--and they are characteristic of a large group--the onset of ecstasy
has been seen as a gradual, though always involuntary process. Generally it has
been the culminating point of a period of contemplation. The self, absorbed in
the orison of quiet or of union, or some analogous concentration on its
transcendental interests, has passed over the limit of these states; and slid
into a still ecstatic trance, with its outward characteristics of rigid limbs,
cold, and depressed respiration.

The ecstasy, however, instead of developing
naturally from a state of intense absorption in the Divine Vision, may seize
the subject abruptly and irresistibly, when in his normal state of
consciousness. This is strictly what ascetic writers mean by Rapture. We have
seen that the essence of the mystic life consists in the remaking of
personality: its entrance into a conscious relation with the Absolute. This
process is accompanied in the mystic by the development of an art expressive of
his peculiar genius: the art of contemplation. His practice of this art, like
the practice of poetry, music, or any other form of creation, may follow normal
lines, at first amenable to the control of his will, and always dependent on
his own deliberate attention to the supreme Object of his quest; that is to
say, on his orison. His mystic states, however they may end, will owe their
beginning to some voluntary act upon his part: a deliberate response to the
invitation of God, a turning from the visible to the invisible world.
Sometimes, however, his genius for the transcendent becomes too
strong for the other elements of character, and manifests itself in psychic
disturbances--abrupt and ungovernable invasions from the subliminal
region--which make its exercise parallel to the "fine frenzy" of the prophet,
the composer, or the poet. Such is Rapture: a violent and uncontrollable
expression of genius for the Absolute, which temporarily disorganizes and may
permanently injure the nervous system of the self. Often, but not necessarily,
Rapture--like its poetic equivalent--yields results of great splendour and
value for life. But it is an accident, not an implicit of mystical experience:
an indication of disharmony between the subject's psychophysical make-up and
his transcendental powers.

Rapture, then, may accompany the whole
development of selves of an appropriate type. We have seen that it is a common
incident in mystical conversion. The violent uprush of subliminal intuitions by
which such conversion is marked disorganizes the normal consciousness,
overpowers the will and the senses, and entails a more or less complete
entrancement. This was certainly the case with Suso and Rulman Merswin, and
perhaps with Pascal: whose "Certitude, Peace, Joy" sums up the exalted
intuition of Perfection and Reality--the conviction of a final and
unforgettable knowledge--which is characteristic of all ecstatic perception.

In her Spiritual Relations, St. Teresa speaks in
some detail of the different phases or forms of expression of these violent
ecstatic states: trance, which in her system means that which we have called
ecstasy, and transport, or "flight of the spirit," which is the equivalent of
rapture. "The difference between trance and transport," she says, "is this. In
a trance the soul gradually dies to outward things, losing the senses and
living unto God. But a transport comes on by one sole act of His Majesty,
wrought in the innermost part of the soul with such swiftness that it is as if
the higher part thereof were carried away, and the soul were leaving the
body."[772]

Rapture, says St. Teresa in another place, "comes
in general as a shock, quick and sharp, before you can collect your thoughts,
or help yourself in any way; and you see and feel it as a cloud, or a strong
eagle rising upwards and carrying you away on its wings. I repeat it: you feel
and see yourself carried away, you know not whither."[773] This carrying-away sensation may even assume the
concrete form which is known as levitation: when the upward and outward
sensations so dominate the conscious field that the subject is convinced that
she is raised bodily from the ground. "It seemed to me, when I tried to make
some resistance, as if a great force beneath my feet lifted me up. I know of
nothing with which to compare it; but it was much more violent than the other
spiritual visitations, and I was therefore as one ground to pieces
. . . And further, I confess that it threw me into a great fear, very great
indeed at first; for when I saw my body thus lifted up from the earth, how
could I help it? Though the spirit draws it upwards after itself, and that with
great sweetness if unresisted, the senses are not lost; at least I was so
much myself as to be able to see that I was being lifted up."[774]

So Rulman Merswin said that in the rapture
which accompanied his conversion, he was carried round the garden with his feet
off the ground:[775] and St. Catherine of
Siena, in a passage which I have already quoted, speaks of the strength of the
spirit, which raises the body from the earth.[776]

The subjective nature of this feeling of
levitation is practically acknowledged by St. Teresa when she says, "When the
rapture was over, my body seemed frequently to be buoyant, as if all weight had
departed from it; so much so, that now and then I scarcely knew that my feet
touched the ground. But during the rapture the body is very often as it were
dead, perfectly powerless. It continues in the position it was in when the
rapture came upon it--if sitting, sitting." Obviously here the outward
conditions of physical immobility coexisted with the subjective sensation of
being "lifted Up."[777]

The self's consciousness when in the condition of
rapture may vary from the complete possession of her faculties claimed by St.
Teresa to a complete entrancement. However abrupt the oncoming of the
transport, it does not follow that the mystic instantly loses his
surface-consciousness. "There remains the power of seeing and hearing; but it
is as if the things heard and seen were at a great distance far away."[778] They have retreated, that is to say, to
the fringe of the conscious field, but may still remain just within it. Though
the senses may not be entirely entranced, however, it seems that the power of
movement is always lost. As in ecstasy, breathing and circulation are much
diminished.

"By the command of the Bridegroom when He intends
ravishing the soul," says St. Teresa, "the doors of the mansions and even those
of the keep and of the whole castle are closed; for He takes away the power of
speech, and although occasionally the other faculties are retained rather
longer, no word can be uttered. Sometimes the person is at once deprived of all
the senses, the hands and body becoming as cold as if the soul had
fled; occasionally no breathing can be detected. This condition lasts but a
short while, I mean in the same degree, for when this profound suspension
diminishes the body seems to come to itself and gain strength to return again
to this death which gives more vigorous life to the soul."[779]

This spiritual storm, then, in St. Teresa's
opinion, enhances the vitality of those who experience it: makes them "more
living than before." It initiates them into "heavenly secrets," and if it does
not do this it is no "true rapture," but a "physical weakness such as women are
prone to owing to their delicacy of constitution." Its sharpness and violence,
however, leave considerable mental disorder behind: "This supreme state of
ecstasy never lasts long, but although it ceases, it leaves the will so
inebriated, and the mind so transported out of itself that for a day, or
sometimes for several days, such a person is incapable of attending to anything
but what excites the will to the love of God; although wide awake enough to
this, she seems asleep as regards all earthly matters."[780]

But when equilibrium is re-established, the true
effects of this violent and beatific intuition of the Absolute begin to invade
the normal life. The self which has thus been caught up to awareness of new
levels of Reality, is stimulated to fresh activity by the strength of its
impressions. It now desires an eternal union with that which it has known; with
which for a brief moment it seemed to be merged. The peculiar talent of the
mystic--power of apprehending Reality which his contemplations have ordered and
developed, and his ecstasies express--here reacts upon his life-process, his
slow journey from the Many to the One. His nostalgia has been increased by a
glimpse of the homeland. His intuitive apprehension of the Absolute, which
assumes in ecstasy its most positive form, spurs him on towards that permanent
union with the Divine which is his goal. "Such great graces," says St. Teresa,
"leave the soul avid of total possession of that Divine Bridegroom who has
conferred them."[781]

Hence the ecstatic states do not merely lift the
self to an abnormal degree of knowledge: they enrich her life, contribute to
the remaking of her consciousness, develop and uphold the "strong and stormy
love which drives her home." They give her the clearest vision she can have of
that transcendent standard to which she must conform: entail her sharpest
consciousness of the inflow of that Life on which her little striving life
depends. Little wonder, then, that--though the violence of the onset may often
try his body to the full--the mystic comes forth from a "good
ecstasy" as Pascal from the experience of the Fire, humbled yet exultant,
marvellously strengthened; and ready, not for any passive enjoyments, but
rather for the struggles and hardships of the Way, the deliberate pain and
sacrifice of love.

In the third Degree of Ardent Love, says Richard
of St. Victor, love paralyses action. Union (copula) is the symbol of
this state: ecstasy is its expression. The desirous soul, he says finely, no
longer thirsts for God but into God. The pull of its desire draws
it into the Infinite Sea. The mind is borne away into the abyss of Divine
Light; and, wholly forgetful of exterior things, knows not even itself, but
passes utterly into its God. In this state, all earthly desire is absorbed in
the heavenly glory. "Whilst the mind is separated from itself, and whilst it is
borne away into the secret place of the divine mystery and is surrounded on all
sides by the fire of divine love, it is inwardly penetrated and inflamed by
this fire, and utterly puts off itself and puts on a divine love: and being
conformed to that Beauty which it has beheld, it passes utterly into that other
glory."[782]

Thus does the state of ecstasy contribute to the
business of deification; of the remaking of the soul's susbtance in conformity
with the Goodness, Truth, and Beauty which is God, "Being conformed to that
Beauty which it has beheld, it passes utterly into that other glory"; into the
flaming heart of Reality, the deep but dazzling darkness of its home.

[736] St. Thomas proves ecstasies to be
inevitable on just this psychological ground. "The higher our mind is raised to
the contemplation of spiritual things," he says, "the more it is abstracted
from sensible things. But the final term to which contemplation can possibly
arrive is the divine substance. Therefore the mind that sees the divine
substance must be totally divorced from the bodily senses, either by death or
bysome rapture" ("Sultana contra Gentiles," I. iii. cap. xlvii.,
Rickaby's translation).

[742] This power of detecting and hearing
the call of duty, though she was deaf to everything else, is evidently related
to the peculiarity noticed by Ribot; who says that an ecstatic hears no sounds,
save, in some cases, the voice of one specific person, which is always able to
penetrate the trance. ("Les Maladies de la Volonté," p. 125.)

[754] Compare Dante, Letter to Can Grande,
sect. 28, where he adduces this fact of "the ravishing of sinners for their
correction," in support of his claim that the "Divine Comedy" is the fruit of
experience, and that he had indeed "navigated the great Sea of Being" of which
he writes.

[770] "The activity of the mind is lulled to
rest: rapt in God, It can no longer find itself. . . . Being so deeply
engulphed in that ocean, now it can find no place to issue therefrom. Of itself
it cannot think, nor can it say what it is like: because transformed, it hath
another vesture. All its perceptions have gone forth to gaze upon the Good, and
contemplate that Beauty which has no likeness" (Lauda xci.).

771 "The doors are flung wide: conjoined to God, it possesses all
that is in Him. It feels that which it felt not: sees that which it knew not,
possesses that which it believed not, tastes, though it savours not. Because it
is wholly lost to itself, it possesses that height of Unmeasured Perfection.
Because it has not retained in itself the mixture of any other thing, it has
received in abundance that Imageless Good" (op. cit.).

[777] Vida, cap, xx. SS 23. At the same time
in the present state of our knowledge and in view of numerous attested cases of
levitation, it is impossible to dogmatise on this subject. The supernaturalist
view is given in its extreme form by Farges, "Mystical Phenomena," pp. 536
seq.